by Fritz Galt
On further inspection that morning, she had found that the other quarters in the compound were unoccupied and filthy. It was a hotel for one.
Finally, she heard gears grinding beyond the compound wall, and the gate opened.
Yusaf stepped out of the car and held the door open for her.
“First you will visit our chief justice.”
“Wait a minute,” she said. “I’m not a tourist here. I’ll tell you whom I want to see.”
The car passed out of the compound. In the bright morning light, Natalie could see what she hadn’t been apparent the night before.
Every other building had been crushed by rocket fire. The city was a virtual ghost town. Several men picked their way among what looked like ancient ruins, but were just the remainder of the previous years’ fighting.
She turned her head left and right to stare out the car’s windows. The scene reminded her of scenes of Berlin after the fall of the Third Reich.
Kabul had been deprived of electricity and running water for five years during and after the mujahideen battle for control. Alongside a narrow ditch, freshly washed linens fluttered in the dusty breeze.
Then she saw one. A woman. Garbed in a bell-shaped burqa with a screen over her face, she drifted among the strewn rocks. She held out a frail hand to the few people she found, but men of all ages and children were begging, too.
The city seemed nearly deserted, especially after India, but it also appeared more impoverished. Nobody owned anything except for the rifle slung over their back and the knife hanging from their belt.
Then they passed bazaars and markets full of gun stores. The words “armed camp” came to mind.
Many of the guns were old and appeared to be what one might call collector pieces. The NRA would approve. She saw pistols and single shot rifles that looked like they came straight from the set of a Civil War movie with their long barrels, wooden stocks and brass workings.
She also saw evidence of modern warfare: machine guns, mortars, multiple rocket launchers and some sophisticated-looking communications equipment.
The city’s economy seemed built on armaments. Did the war fuel the economy, or did the economy fuel the war?
At a street corner in what would otherwise be called “downtown,” she witnessed a woman being lashed by several men with a thick belt. She didn’t cry out loud as she hurried along.
“She has not veiled her face properly. She has provoked them,” Yusaf explained.
“My God,” Natalie said. “This is worse than the Spanish Inquisition.”
“We are very proud of our laws. In our country, the law is the law. You murder someone, you hang. You fornicate or commit adultery, it’s a hundred lashes and stoning to death. You steal something, we cut off your arm. Very simple, eh?”
Natalie wrapped her dupatta lower to cover her auburn hair.
“Ah, there’s our most famous tourist spot,” Yusaf said, clapping with delight. “See the Presidential Palace? Najibullah, who was the last of the Communists, and his brother were hanged on the street in front of it.”
Near the center of town, Natalie was taken to a large, empty building with a cavernous main office. There, a single, ornate desk sat in the center. An old man squared himself behind the desk.
Natalie introduced herself to the chief justice although he already seemed to know who she was.
“I have come here to request Lucius Ford’s release,” she said.
“He’s not captive. He may come and go as he pleases.”
Natalie remained standing beside Yusaf, while the old man remained seated. “You mean to tell me that he wants to stay here?”
“He’s safe here as are all guests of our country.”
“I think you’re carrying this guest thing a little too far,” she said, sitting down uninvited. It could become a long ordeal. “Will you let me see him or not?”
“I’m sorry, but he’s in a building that women are not allowed to enter.”
“What building?”
“Demazang Prison.”
“Then he’s not your guest. He’s your prisoner.”
“That may be your interpretation. But he’s a free man. He can come and go as he pleases.”
“Yes. You’ve already said that.”
She considered the impasse they had reached. “Who is your Foreign Minister?”
“Mr. Aminullah is our Foreign Minister.”
“Fine. Take me to him.”
“He’s not in Kabul.”
“Who is in Kabul that I can talk to?”
The man smiled. “Me.”
“Okay, then who’s in charge of the prison.”
“The Ministry of Justice.”
“And who’s the head of the Ministry of Justice?”
The man smiled even more broadly. “Me.”
“So under what law are you detaining Mr. Ford?”
“Alas, we have no written laws.”
She studied him. He seemed proud of the fact that he was presiding over a Ministry of Justice that had no laws. “You must find it frustrating at times,” she said, digging for a vein of compassion in the man.
For a moment, she thought she had struck it. The man looked out the open window. She smelled the fresh earth outside.
Then he said, “There’s only one Law.”
She nodded to indicate understanding and agreement. “And how has he broken the Law?”
The man grinned. “Who said he broke the law? He is our guest.”
“Ah, yes. That again.”
Natalie frowned. This wasn’t the way she pictured negotiations going. She brought no authority to the table and had to rely on subterfuge.
Then she remembered Lou Potts in Trishna Seafood Restaurant in Bombay complimenting her. She was damn effective, he had said. Look at her now.
“May I ask you another question?” she probed.
“Please do.”
She vaguely recalled something about offering only the president’s ear, but she waved the thought away.
“Are you willing to accept responsibility for a nuclear attack if your government doesn’t release him?” she asked directly. “Are you willing to deny your country UN membership? Are you turning away millions of dollars in international aid? Are you willing to forego the benefits our country is prepared to bestow on your people once Osama bin Laden is brought to justice? And finally, are you prepared to override your supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar’s decision to set Lucius Ford free?”
If she had unnerved him, she couldn’t tell at first. From the way he looked around the room, it appeared that he wasn’t about to dignify her outburst with a response.
Then, slowly, he said, “Let me take you to see someone.”
Yusaf rushed out to the car and held the door wide open.
Oh no. What had she just said? Clearly she had overstepped all legal authority.
Her career as a hostage negotiator would be short-lived.
Mick paid the cabby a few extra rupees and stepped in front of his apartment building on Bombay’s highest point, affluent Malabar Hill. Strangely, there was no watchman to open the car door and greet him.
Instead, he was met by the putrid stench of uncollected garbage wafting out of the building’s open-air entrance and stairwell.
Pressing a sleeve against his nose and mouth, he hurried up the polished granite stairs to the second landing.
His key still opened the heavy security door to the apartment.
Brilliant sunlight and the Arabian Sea still blinded him from the balcony, but the stark interior of the apartment seemed unfamiliar. He stared for some time at the blank walls, the tile floor and the stack of sheet-covered furniture in a corner.
He felt as empty as the place. Even his memories were gone. Maybe from the balcony he could recover what was lost.
A steamy wave of stench washed over him as he stepped outside. Heat seeped under his thick black hair, prickling his scalp. Soon, sweat trickled down his neck.
He pounded a thick layer of dust off a turned-up cushion and set it on a deck chair. When he sat down, it wasn’t as comfortable as he had remembered it. Beside him, ferns and roses and some broad-leaved plants had wilted in their pots.
A breeze was blowing from the sea, bringing a sweet scent. Crows cawed and circled overhead. Butterflies sampled the bougainvillea below.
He tried to conjure up memories of his wife and daughter. All that came back was video footage of his daughter’s first tricycle ride around the furniture on the balcony. His emotional trauma from Mariah’s coma must have eclipsed all his good memories.
He had sat under the ceiling fan holding Natalie’s hand and bouncing Mariah on his knee as the sun set. Now someone had turned the cushions up like the chairs in a restaurant at the end of the day.
A mosquito began to explore the inside of his forearm, probing his skin with a stinger made from an extended mouth.
“C’mon little bugger,” he said. “Shoot me up, too.” He had been anticipating this moment. Once exposed to the deadly disease, he wouldn’t be afraid of the sight of a mosquito any longer. He would be free to function like an unstoppable machine until either he found a cure or he succumbed to death.
The mosquito found a spot and bent forward. Its front legs kneeled and its proboscis tickled his forearm as it passed into his skin. Within seconds, the mosquito had filled half a sack of blood. Before it could withdraw its slim, deadly tube. Mick slapped it, leaving behind a bloody smear, flattened legs and crumpled wings on his hairless arm.
A lump began to form.
Some experts called mosquitoes “flying syringes” because they injected saliva into the skin in order to grease the passage of liquids through their proboscises. While shooting the saliva into one’s skin, they deposited random malaria larvae in the human blood. He had to kill the mosquito before it sucked its saliva back inside along with the blood.
He focused on the white lump forming on his tanned skin. Now he couldn’t be distracted. He wouldn’t be paranoid about mosquito bites for the remainder of his mission.
Suddenly, as clear as day, he could visualize Mariah standing beside him on the balcony, her nose pressed against his face, whispering some urgent secret to him.
A strong flood of warm feelings toward her flowed through him. Now father and daughter were truly connected.
He was exposed.
Squashed between the chief justice and Yusaf, Natalie was driven across the devastated city of Kabul.
To her eye, the city had a strange, sad cast of color. She had become accustomed to the tropics where a harsh sun bore down directly on people, virtually eliminating shadows for several hours a day. In Kabul, however, long shadows at midday gave the illusion to her of perpetual sunset.
Wildlife appeared to outnumber humans in the city. Goats, their hides a colorful patchwork of brown and gray and white, seemed to outnumber dogs. Two-story camels seemed to walk straight out of Star Wars. Yet they were living and breathing, with scabs on their knees and snooty expressions on their faces as they pulled their owners on minuscule carts.
The car finally squealed to a halt before a rebuilt concrete office building. In the dilapidated city, it stood out like a jewel.
Old wood-stock rifles hanging from their shoulders, two men guarded the entrance atop several stairs. As the chief justice brushed past them, they scowled and watched the group carefully.
Inside the first room sat even tougher-looking men, their feet in combat boots sprawled out before them, rolled-brim caps cocked jauntily on their heads. A row of semi-automatic rifles lined a wall beneath a map of Afghanistan.
An officer stood up from behind a central desk, his uniform freshly pressed, his chest jingling with decorations and medals. Natalie felt a hollow pity when she saw the man’s sad eyes.
“This is Commander Tureki,” the chief justice said, and introduced Natalie as “the American.”
“Where’s Lucius Ford?” Natalie said, taking the direct approach. “We demand that you release him.”
“I am a field commander, not the President of Afghanistan,” Tureki said.
“Okay, where is the President of Afghanistan? Don’t give me these low-ranking fanatic gunslingers who sit around in the shade all day,” she said to the chief justice.
Commander Tureki grinned. “I take it you’re not impressed with our headquarters?”
“What headquarters? This dump? Now get me to someone real I can talk to.” She watched Tureki carefully. His melancholy eyes signified someone she could approach on a human level. But that wasn’t her role to play.
Tureki also seemed to have something to say on a personal level. He told his bodyguards to remain seated. “Step outside,” he told her.
Beside the building, a construction crew was ferrying away rubble in circular pans atop their heads. The commander clapped his hands and the local guards shooed the workers away.
When the rumble of the workers’ footsteps dissipated, the guards turned and disappeared as well.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “What do you hear?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s right. Nothing. If you would have stood on this spot three years ago, you would have heard rockets exploding over every house on this street. You would have heard bullets ricocheting around the four walls of your home. And then you would have truly heard nothing, because your head would have been blown off. If you weren’t killed because you were foolish enough to stand up in your own house, you would have been killed as an American on Afghan soil.”
He went on. “What we Taliban have done is to free the people of this city from terror. We have cleared the mujahideen factions from most of this huge country. When you criticize us, think of the men and women and children of this city who no longer fear losing their lives every minute of the day.”
Wind howled through the gaping windows and over the roofless opening above them.
“Nice speech,” Natalie said. “Nice guns. Nice job. But who are you Taliban? Do you have any children?”
“I have a daughter.”
“So do I. How can you allow your daughter to grow up hiding behind the walls of her house, and deny her medical care, an education, or future employment? How can you face seeing her whipped on the streets if she flashes an ankle in public?”
“My daughter is Allah’s child. She should uphold the virtues of Islamic women.”
“And if your daughter should come under attack by the Northern Alliance, would you allow the infidel Americans to intervene and save her?”
“You ask me if I put my love of my daughter above my love of Allah.”
Natalie stared him straight in the eye.
“Nothing is above my love of Allah.”
“That’s a slogan. Can you apply it to your child?”
“Absolutely. I would never allow infidels to touch her.”
“I thought so,” she said. She had failed on the personal front, trumped by the religious card.
What argument did she have left?
“Tell me, Commander,” she said, recalling her telephone conversation with the father-in-law of the terrorist Abu Mohammed Ali Khan. She had to take a stab in the dark. “What do you know about the Moghul Project in India?”
Tureki shrugged.
“What do you know about Osama bin Laden?”
“He’s up in the mountains. This is Kabul.”
“What do you think of him?”
“He’s trouble. If we would have known what kind of trouble he was bringing, we wouldn’t have let him in the country.”
“He’s bringing you into direct conflict with India. He declared a jihad against India.”
“We’re already involved in India. We have young martyrs dying every day in Kashmir.”
“I’m not talking about Kashmir. I’m talking about all of India.”
Tureki dragged a toe across the dirt. “Go on.”
“Have you heard the World Health Organization’s statement about India? Hundreds of
millions will die from a deadly form of malaria this year. I believe that’s the Moghul Project.”
“And bin Laden is involved with the project?”
“I can’t say for sure, but his timing’s awfully good. India’s defense forces and economy will be severely crippled by the disease.”
Tureki headed back to his headquarters, and Natalie followed him. “Bin Laden doesn’t invade countries. He rules by fear.”
“Well, whatever his game is, his next target is India.”
They had reached the interior of the headquarters, and Tureki pulled out a Pakistani newspaper. “Maybe his target is bigger than that.”
Natalie stared at the paper. “I can’t read Urdu.”
“Last night the world witnessed coups d’état in four islands in the Indian Ocean,” he paraphrased. “They are Mauritius, Seychelles, Reunion and Comoros.” He waited for her reaction.
“Who took them over?”
“Foreign mercenaries.”
She frowned. “I’d call that several notches above terrorism,” she said. “Mr. bin Laden happens to be digging your country into a very deep hole. If you continue to give him sanctuary, the Taliban regime can’t possibly survive.”
Commander Tureki sucked on the inside of a cheek and surveyed the flattened city before him. Under his breath, he muttered to an underling. “Get me Omar.”
As Commander Tureki held the telephone and waited for the call to be patched through to the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, he motioned for Natalie to sit down. “Now explain the connections to me.”
Natalie took a moment to compose the facts as she knew them. “A Muslim Indian terrorist named Abu Mohammed Ali Khan is part of an Osama bin Laden front organization called the International Islamic Relief Organization. Abu is involved with something called the ‘Moghul Project,’ which involves a deadly disease. Moghuls being the ancient Muslim Persian invaders who conquered most of India, I can only surmise that the project intends to do something similar, along the lines of the Islamist invasion of those islands in the Indian Ocean. However, add to this the fact that bin Laden has publicly declared jihad on India and the WHO has discovered a deadly form of malaria affecting hundreds of millions of Indians, the picture seems to come into focus. While you go around telling the world that you consider bin Laden a part of your team, he’s off playing hard ball in the big leagues. You dink around detaining our ambassador and try to make your petty points, meanwhile you’ve got a full blown Adolph Hitler setting off a World War Three under your tent. Are you going to get hold of that Omar or what?”